Kathleen Harrison: One Experience With a Negative Presence
Kathleen Harrison, a renowned ethnobotanist and author, has had her fair share of experiences with the plants and spirits that she has dedicated her life to studying. Her work has taken her deep into the Amazon rainforest, where she has learned from indigenous traditions and explored the transformative power of plant medicine. However, one experience stands out in her mind as a particularly negative encounter with a presence that she could not explain or understand.
The experience took place in the early 1990s, during one of Harrison’s trips to the Peruvian Amazon. She was staying in a small village, where she had built a deep connection with the local shaman and his community. One day, while walking alone in the forest, Harrison suddenly felt a sense of palpable fear and unease. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched, stalked by something that she could not see.
As she walked, the sensation intensified, and Harrison began to hear strange noises around her. She heard rustling in the leaves, footsteps, and whispers, as if someone or something was trying to communicate with her. Harrison tried to rationalize the experience, thinking that perhaps it was her mind playing tricks or that she was simply being paranoid. However, the fear persisted and only grew stronger.
Eventually, Harrison decided to retreat back to the village, where she sought the help of the local shaman. She explained her experience to him, and he nodded gravely, recognizing the signs of a negative presence. The shaman performed a ritual to clear the space around Harrison, creating sacred boundaries to protect her from harm.
Through this experience, Harrison learned about the reality of negative energies and entities that can exist beyond our physical realm. She realized that even in the midst of her profound experiences with plant medicine and spirit guides, she was not immune to the dangers of the unknown. However, she also gained a new appreciation for the importance of finding a trusted spiritual guide, someone who can help navigate the complexities of the spiritual realm with wisdom and compassion.
In conclusion, Kathleen Harrison’s experience with a negative presence provides a powerful reminder of the mysteries and dangers that can exist beyond our ordinary perceptions. It also underscores the importance of finding guidance and support in our spiritual journeys, especially when we encounter forces that are beyond our comprehension. Ultimately, it is only through humility, openness, and respect for the unknown that we can learn from the spirits and plants that hold the key to our transformation and healing.
Why is DMT called “the spirit molecule?”
Rick Strassman was the first American researcher to receive government approval to study hallucinogens after a two-decade ban. Between the years of 1990-95, the clinical associate professor of psychiatry administered roughly 400 doses of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) to nearly 60 patients at the General Clinical Research Center of the University of New Mexico Hospital. His findings changed the course of his career.
While Strassman initially confined his clinical work confined to recording the physiological effects of DMT, such as heart rate and blood pressure, he couldn’t deny the overwhelming religious experiences reported by participants. As he reported in his book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule (and subsequent documentary film, for which I served as the music supervisor and co-wrote the theme song), over half of the volunteers claimed to have interacted with non-human beings while under the influence of DMT.
Strassman coined the term “spirit molecule” based on this half-decade of research as well as the apparent spiritual nature of DMT. These studies are widely credited for the resurgence of interest in psychedelics in both popular culture and clinical research. While tens of millions of dollars are flowing into the psychedelic research space today, we can point to Strassman for reviving this burgeoning field of research.MDPT for sale Online
DMT Pharmacology
DMT is most well-known as the psychoactive component of the “vine of the soul,” ayahuasca. Whereas ingestion of DMT alone results in a five- to 10-minute trip—the length of time Strassman’s volunteers were under the influence after being injected—when combined with particular vines, such as the Ayahuasca liana (Banisteriopsis caapi), the experience lasts for four to six hours.
Traditionally, ayahuasca is sourced from the shrub P. viridis, though many substitutes have been documented. Likewise, numerous vines contain alkaloids that serve as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), which make the DMT in the brew orally active and long-lasting. In the Colombian Tukano community, for example, six types of ayahuasca are used ceremonially, and each is said to produce different effects.
DMT is ubiquitous in nature. Every mammal that has been tested (including humans) produces it endogenously. At least 50 plants contain it. As with other psychedelics, DMT is related to serotonin, as well as melatonin. As the latter is produced by the pineal gland, some speculate that DMT is a mystical key, with the pineal gland being the physical correlate of the “third eye.” In fact, Rene Descartes identified this gland as the “Seat of the Soul”
The active ingredients of ayahuasca were first isolated by German pharmacologist Louis Lewin in the 1920s. He initially discovered the psychotropic effects of harmine, though some researchers, such as ethnobotanist Jonathan Ott, would later describe the experience of this alkaloid as closer to Valium.
DMT was first synthesized by German chemist Richard Manske in 1931. It took 15 years for Brazilian chemist Oswaldo Goncalves de Lima to discover it as a naturally-occurring alkaloid in plants. DMT wasn’t discovered in humans until the mid-fifties, around the time when Hungarian chemist Stephen Szara became the first researcher to scientifically study its psychotropic effects.
Chemically, DMT, as well as the related 5-MeO-DMT, are similar in composition to psilocin and LSD. As pharmacologist Richard J Miller puts it in his book, Drugged, “substances like LSD, psilocin, and DMT, under the appropriate circumstances, can all produce classical hallucinogenic experiences that are qualitatively indistinguishable from one another.”
Third Eye Opening
Rick Strassman has straddled the line between anecdote and data for decades. As spirituality is always subjective, regardless of measurable physiological effects, discerning between universal themes and personal experiences is challenging.
Outside of his role as a clinician, Strassman is a longtime Zen Buddhist practitioner. Early in his research on DMT, he couldn’t help but notice similarities in the experiences of meditation and psychedelics. This research in the early nineties led to his hypothesis that the pineal gland is the key to understanding near-death and mystical states. As he writes,
“This tiny organ, the ‘seat of the soul’ or ‘third eye’ of the ancients, might produce DMT or similar substances by simple chemical alterations of the well-known pineal hormone melatonin, or of the important brain chemical serotonin. Perhaps it is DMT, released by the pineal, that opens the mind’s eye to spiritual, or non-physical, realities.”
The connection between meditation and psychedelics has been studied in detail. Science journalist James Kingsland notes that psychedelics and meditation both decrease activity and connectivity in the brain’s default mode network—in particular, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), parahippocampus, and medial prefrontal cortex. This loosening of the “ego centre” could be fundamental in the therapeutic applications of psilocybin, iboga, LSD, and ayahuasca currently being studied. As with Strassman, Kingsland points to serotonin when considering its therapeutic effects.
“By simulating the deluge of serotonin that accompanies life-threatening stress, psychedelics appear to ‘reboot’ the brain, providing an opportunity to unlearn the maladaptive programming that underlies addiction, depression, PTSD and OCD, and replace it with the healthier patterns of thought and behaviour.”
Parallels between mysticism, meditation, and psychedelics reached a fever pitch in the 1960s. Critics found psychedelic substances to be “cheating” the long and hard work of meditative practice. Strassman considers both tools that help change thought and behaviour. A number of volunteers in Strassman’s trials found their DMT experiences to be an “enlightenment experience” that they carried with them for years afterwards.
This was also evidenced in the famous “Good Friday Experiment,” when Harvard divinity students were dosed with psilocybin in 1962. Twenty-five years later, all students except one rated the day as a highlight of their spiritual life. The Johns Hopkins trials, in which psilocybin was used to treat critically ill patients struggling with existential distress, produced similar results: 70 per cent of participants rated the day as one of the five most profound experiences of their lives five years after the study concluded.
DMT: The Spirit Molecule is a 2010 documentary film based on a book of the same name by Dr Rick Strassman.[1] Directed by Mitch Schultz[2] and starring Joe Rogan as narrator,[3] the documentary deals primarily with the psychedelic and entheogenic drug N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) through the lens of interviews with those who have used the drug, either as part of Strassman’s scientific studies or in combination with MAOIs (as ayahuasca).
In 2013, Adam Winstock, working off of data from the Global Drug Survey, hypothesized that the documentary may have led to the increased popularity of DMT.[4] In July 2018, Variety reported that the documentary was one of the most streamed on Netflix
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